


leave me (déjà vu)

by ambivalentangst



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, F/M, Gunshot Wounds, Post-Spider-Man: Far From Home, pre-identity reveal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-29
Updated: 2019-09-29
Packaged: 2020-11-07 15:33:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20819654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ambivalentangst/pseuds/ambivalentangst
Summary: “Like the murder,” he’d mumbled, bleeding and eyes going out of focus, and MJ presses her palm over the pendant hanging around her neck.Let me tell him thank you for it,she pleads to whoever might be listening, not that she’s sure anyone is because she’s her and she’s weird partly ‘cause it’s easier to be weird than lonely butcome on, just this once—“I don’t know. It’s not looking good.”MJ never met Tony Stark and was only convinced in the case that Peter really was Spider-Man that he knew him, but he's standing on the wall, sad and worn, and a hospital waiting room is no place to ask him what the hell he—or his ghost—is doing there.





	leave me (déjà vu)

_“Can you give this to MJ—in case something happens to me?”_

Michelle—MJ as she prefers, ‘cause only her dad calls her Michelle and he only calls her anything when he’s mad—doesn’t know that Peter had a contingency plan, just in case—  
  
Just in case she hugged him, red and black fabric smooth under her arms and Peter warm beneath all of it, and he held her back so, _so_ gently, which should’ve been impossible for someone she knows can stop cars in their tracks with their bare hands, and then collapsed onto the bridge.  
  
Michelle’s nails dig into the heels of her palms, the sharp, half-moon sting grounding with its bite. The waiting room smells like antiseptic and salt, though she could be imagining the latter as an older lady sobs into her handkerchief in the corner.  
  
She knows lots about gunshot wounds. She knows how long it takes the average person to bleed out and what areas are the worst to get hit in. She knows her mom worries about the pistol her dad somehow got licensed to carry, and she knows the type of hole it would make if he started yelling like he always does and there was an accident. She knows Peter got a bullet in his stomach, and she knows he could be dying as she sits, blood on her shirt, next to some old white dude who looks just as distraught as she feels.  
  
He told her his name was Happy, and MJ fails to find the humor in that at the moment.  
  
Ned is planted on her other side, but Betty and Flash are gone, whisked home and presumably safe. MJ hasn’t heard anything about May yet.  
  
“Like the murder,” he’d mumbled, bleeding and eyes going out of focus, and MJ presses her palm over the pendant hanging around her neck.  
  
_Let me tell him thank you for it_, she pleads to whoever might be listening, not that she’s sure anyone is because she’s her and she’s weird partly ‘cause it’s easier to be weird than lonely but _come on, just this once—_  
  
“I don’t know. It’s not looking good.”  
  
MJ nearly falls out of her seat she jumps so high, and she’s suddenly the focus of half the room’s attention. “Sorry,” she mutters, looking around and ducking her head as she tries to settle back in. To either side of her, she finds concern. From Happy, it’s etched in his brows, wiry and rumpled above his dark eyes. As for Ned, his face has gone a shade paler than the sick sheen that’s come over it ever since he found out. “I was just getting tired, and then my brain did the thing where it feels like you’re falling.” For good measure, she adds something she saw on an Instagram post that she doubts is true but knows they’re too scared of her to question. “You know it’s your body thinking you’re dying?”  
  
They look past her head at one another and don’t laugh, but she gets one maybe-amused look—Happy—and a strained smile—Ned—before they lapse back into silence.  
  
“Sorry. Not used to having to be discreet.”  
  
This time, Michelle doesn’t react other than the narrowing of her eyes as she zeroes in on Tony Stark, leaning against a wall and looking worn. There’s not a whole lot of expression on his face, but his eyes still manage to look sad, focused on anything but her and currently on the clock hanging to his left and MJ’s right.  
  
“God, he’s been in there for hours now, hasn’t he? Sorry, sorry, shouldn’t bring it up. Not like I’m the one that would be mourning, right? I already kicked the bucket.”  
  
MJ’s fingers clench on the armrests of her chair, but she tries to keep her breathing steady. She guesses the stress of not knowing if her almost-boyfriend is going to live or not is more intense than expected if she’s hallucinating.  
  
At any rate, she probably shouldn’t have a mental breakdown here, if that’s what this is, when both Ned and Happy are just as upset as her.  
  
“I’m going to the bathroom,” she announces, shoving off from her seat in a whirl of barely-contained hair and untied shoelaces before either of them can ask any questions. She has no idea where it actually is and doesn’t care if she goes down the wrong hall besides.  
  
MJ never met Tony Stark and was only convinced in the case that Peter really was Spider-Man that he knew him, but he’s paraded through her life via the media for as long as she can remember and would bet at least a twenty that he’ll follow.  
  
She ends up in an empty room, staring him down as he sits on the bed. If she were anyone else, she would call herself a psycho, but she’s researched mental illness extensively and feels the term is derogatory. Therefore, and considering she hasn’t slept for over twenty-four hours and did almost die, she’s calling it a temporary, stress-induced visual and auditory hallucination—not comforting, but better than the alternative.  
  
“Sorry you had to skip out, but Happy’s a good guy. He’ll get you and Ted home no matter what happens.”  
  
“His name’s Ned,” MJ mumbles.  
  
Tony waves her off, sitting on the bed, and her hand comes up again to grip the dahlia. “Yeah, I know. Kid never corrected me though, so it stuck.” His feet tap on the tile floor of the room, and it occurs to MJ that he’s nervous.  
  
He finally meets her eyes, and staring into them, she amends her previous assumption.  
  
He’s not nervous—he’s scared.  
  
“How are you he—“  
  
He’s wringing his hands when he interrupts her. “I don’t know. You’re MJ, right?”  
  
“Don’t cut me off,” she snaps, and then, more gently, “but yeah. Did he—“ _stupid, this is a stupid question, but Peter’s currently Schrödinger’s Spider-Boy, and she wants an answer_, “did he talk about me?”  
  
At Tony’s nod, she considers that if this is a hallucination, her subconscious might just be telling her what she wants to hear because as much as she can pretend to be aloof, there’s no denying the way Peter and his awkward smiles make butterflies erupt in the pit of her stomach.  
  
Then again, maybe not. Her mind is racing, trying to absorb the new layer of _what the actual fuck_ come to settle over the situation, and while the hallucination theory has merit, she’s watched a lot of Buzzfeed Unsolved. Furthermore, she doesn’t care enough about Tony Stark to think herself capable of conjuring up this good of a likeness of him, and another explanation occurs to her.  
  
“Are you a ghost?”

Tony shrugs. “Maybe,” he replies, short. Then, soft, tentative, “What happened?”

MJ doesn’t know why that makes her so angry. She could very well be arguing with herself, but her fists clench, and fire ignites deep within her, blistering with passion. “_What happened_?” she spits his words back in his face, sardonic. “You don’t know?”

_Nobody ever looks, nobody ever sees—Peter needs people and people just keep leaving him and leaving holes in his life like—_

(Like Michelle has in her own and wants filled, like yelling and studying and making bad toast at parties because it’s _safer_ to be left alone, it’s safer to have people think you’re too much to crack.)

(Peter got too close, the crack opened too wide and _boom_—hospital, and MJ still wants him to be better so maybe _they_ can be better because if he can pull through this, well, having the worst behind them is a kind of security blanket on its own.)

Tony winces, putting his head in his hands as he shakes his head no. “Things are hazy,” he mutters, and the fury leaves her in one scorching rush as she registers how _tired_ his lined face is.

In the room’s fluorescents, the grey hair arching over his ears looks silver, almost ethereal.

“It was white and then—here,” he says, standing up to pace, hands fluttering around him absentmindedly, grazing over the desk by the bed, the plant in the corner, the paintings hanging on the walls. He doesn’t look dead, but MJ knows the story as well as anyone else and, more convincingly, notices the convenient bathroom breaks Peter takes, blinking away tears, when it’s brought up. Tony Stark is dead, but in the moment, MJ just pegs him as _sorry_ even as he continues to chatter. “You know hospitals don’t smell any better in the afterlife?”

“Shocker,” she drawls, not sounding half as flat as she’d like, betrayed by the wobble in her voice. “There was a dude—Mysterio. Had some beef with you, I guess, and fooled everyone into thinking he was a hero. Peter figured it out—” her hand _clenches_ around the dahlia as she desperately tries not to panic over gunfire and maces and _holy_ _shit—holy fuck no no no _“— and he decided to—um.” She can talk about death. It’s one of her favorite conversation topics, in fact, but this is too personal, too recent. “Peter took him down, but you know.” She gestures to her stomach, feeling bile rise in the back of her throat. “He was a dick.” The statement is grounding, her usual brand of brusque, and yet she still feels sick.

Tony turns from his spot on the far wall, starting the trek back to the door. “Mysterio?”

“Beck?”

He pauses, brow creasing before he cusses under his breath—“_shit_”—and sits again.

MJ watches his face, hidden behind his folded hands, and sees his lips move, but the words take a second to process.

“It was all for him, you know.”

MJ is terrified and thinking of the weight of him in her arms, and she doesn’t ask—doesn’t want to know. She sucks a breath in to bolster herself, chin jutting up, plants her feet too. Her dad hates that expression, tells her in a snarl every time he starts going on about the news or her mom or anything else he taints just by talking about it—“_Don’t you look at me like that._”

MJ has had a long time to decide she doesn’t care what anybody wants her to look like.

“He’s going to pull through,” she informs him, matter-of-fact, like maybe if she sounds convincing enough, it’ll be true. “He’s strong.”

“I know,” he hisses.

“He took Mysterio out by himself.”

“I know.” The second time around, the words are a snap. He gives it a second, then adds “Shouldn’t have had to though.”

MJ can’t argue with that.

At the door, a knock. MJ startles.

_What if it’s a nurse, what if they kick her out because she’s not supposed to be in here, what if—_

It cracks open, and MJ sees a head of salt and pepper hair appear, a face with features she knows but doesn’t because they’re placed a half-space up or down or left or right from where they should be and are more crooked than the version she knows but are still unmistakably _kind_. Her mouth goes dry, and from the bed, Tony waves halfheartedly.

“We should go,” Ben Parker says, and maybe his eyes are on Tony, but he’s _speaking_ to her. “He’ll want a few friendly faces around, however things turn out.”

Yeah, MJ’s definitely leaning more towards the ghost theory.

_He’s going to be fine—he’s going to be fine_, MJ wants to scream but doesn’t because Tony is standing, headed for the door, and she doesn’t have time to yell as she jerks forward, gripping his surprisingly solid sleeve.

Ben looks at her, at _them_, but however sad his eyes are, he’s staunch where Tony is fraying.

“If he makes it, I’m going to be there for him,” she tells him, and though she doesn’t mean to, it comes out like a vow.

A while back, she saw a post that said _marriage is an institution, but the promise is real_. She’d hated the font, not to mention she thought the phrase was stupid, but the memory surfaces unbidden, _I do_ versus _I’ll be there_—kind of funny but not enough to make her want to smile when Tony Stark, already dead, looks pale enough to keel over again over _Peter_.

Tony searches her face, pupils darting back and forth, and unlike most adults when things go wrong, he doesn’t smile. Instead, he—uncertain, worried as he is—nods. “Thanks,” he tells her, and the word all but bleeds sincerity. 

She nods back, lets go, and they’re gone into thin air with a shared glance, leaving MJ cold to start the trek back to the waiting room. As goosebumps pucker on her arms, it’s a small comfort to know that even if she never gets to give Peter a thank you of her own, he has people waiting who can tell him for her—small.

_“Can you give this to MJ—in case something happens to me?”_

A bead of scarlet forms where she grips the dahlia a little too hard.

(_Please_.)

**Author's Note:**

> hi!! it's been a minute but the bones of this has been sitting in the notes app of my phone for a while and with the news that spidey is back in the MCU, I got the inspiration to finish it!! I hope you enjoy, and just to be clear, the ending is meant to be open—it's up to you and your interpretation of things to decide if Peter makes it or not. Thanks for reading, and if you liked it, kudos and comments are always appreciated! 
> 
> If you want to come yell at me about this fic or anything else, I have a Marvel-only blog that can be found [here!](https://ambivalentmarvel.tumblr.com)


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